Tuesday, February 20
1128 Hours
Scrunched into a slippery orange chair at the DMV, I’m waiting with my 15-1/2 year old son to see what he needs to do to get a learner’s permit. With my Supermom powers of detecting danger where none exists, I’m conjuring up exploding gas tanks, road rage and high-speed crashes. I shudder at the picture of my boy in a vehicle going 65 mph. My nickname as a child was “Chicken Little” for my propensity to worry that the sky was falling.

My cell phone bleats. The moment I hear the robotic voice saying “This is an urgent message from the Federal Disaster Medical Response Team,” adrenaline pumps through my body. The neurotransmitter fires up my sympathetic nervous system - heart, lungs, blood vessels, bladder, gut and genitalia. Yes, even them, although I’ll try to wait until tonight in bed to act on it.

The voice continues, “We have been placed on Advisory status for a possible mission as soon as tomorrow. You may respond by doing one of the following:

1. I will review the website information and update my availability soon.

2. I am not available to deploy or assist with a mission for the next few weeks.”

I’m always ready to go. The team consists of a bunch of crazed medical professionals who combine cynicism and compassion, often in the same sentence. I would trust them with my life; in fact, I have. Yes, I’ll go.

More than that though, it’s the survivors, raw and real, who touch me. They’ve been through brutal, life-shattering events; I see their pain, their resilience, and the very depths of who they are. I have perceived terror, rage, gut-wrenching loss, and amazing spirit in survivors. Villages, homes and families destroyed in a nanosecond - the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina; life is fragile and precious. We’re small, and nature’s big. As a disaster mental health worker, I go to bear witness; I hold them and their stories. I am humbled, powerless to do any more. Of course I’ll go.

I will admit, too, that the prospect of avoiding up to two weeks of math homework with my son compels me to say yes, yes, yes, count me in. I hit “1″.

Yet, this notification is odd; always before, we’ve been told where we were going. I can’t access the team website from the DMV, so I call my husband and beg him to do a Google News search. He says, “I hate to disappoint you, but nothing’s happening - no tornadoes, tsunamis, floods, fires, or terrorist attacks. Sorry, sweetheart.”

I’m drumming my fingers and tapping my feet; the purgatory of the DMV is eternal. Finally, the clerk calls us, elucidating the process my son must follow to be licensed. I bolt out and race home, speeding, distracted, setting a very bad example for my soon-to-be-driving boy.

Jamming my key into the door, I throw my purse down and power up the computer. I chant, “come on, come on” as it slowly awakens. I pound in my password and get into the members page of the team website. Mystery solved - we are activated for “Operation Burnt Frost, a Space Object Re-Entry Mission.” Chicken Little was right, the sky is falling. “A US spy satellite…is now nearing the point of re-entering the atmosphere. The satellite carries hydrazine as a fuel source.”

Hydrazine? What’s that? “Hydrazine is a toxic substance with varying health effects…inhalation can cause respiratory tract irritation, seizures and other CNS effects, and death in larger doses. In addition to the hydrazine, there is a very remote possibility of trauma from being struck by falling debris.” Falling debris? The speed of the satellite is 27,000 mph. The only intervention for that kind of trauma is to call DMORT, the Disaster Morticians.

I pull out my huge, black duffle bag and rifle through my gear. I could probably charge my cell phone, iPod, and camera with the electricity surging through me, but I plug everything in to be sure, making a note to remember to pack the chargers. I gas up the car; last time I forgot.

The moon is in total eclipse tonight; the red light eerie. The news is terrible, with lots of name calling - “renegade,” “rogue” and “derelict.” I’m tempted to offer a bullying seminar - “Words can hurt.” There’s no mention of all the other spy satellites that have tumbled down, no mention that government officials said, only two weeks ago, “A disabled U.S. spy satellite is likely to break into small pieces when it falls to Earth within weeks, posing little danger to humans.” Personally, I’m rooting for the rogue.

CNN reports a direct hit at 7:26 p.m.; now the terms are “Herculean,” “heroic” and they’re bragging that they only had a four-second window of opportunity to fire the missile. They nailed it. The Department of Defense said it wouldn’t know for 24 hours whether the fuel tank had been hit or not.

Sleep eludes me; still I buzz with excitement. I clutch my cellphone in my hand; when we were deployed for the San Diego wildfires, the call came at 4:00 a.m. First thing in the morning I check the team website and CNN, even before the coffee is made. Nothing has changed, so I get my son off to school, and I go to work.

At 11:00 a.m., we get the news: “We have been stood down from advisory status for the satellite re-entry; fuel tank destruction has been confirmed.”

While relieved no one has been hurt, I’m disappointed; I wanted to go. With a sigh, I turn to my client who is, like me, a suburban, menopausal woman. I bear witness to her pain, her struggles, and the emptiness in her life. I’m heartened as she descends to the core of her psyche; together we grieve her losses and celebrate her resilience, her amazing spirit. I see anew that we fall and then, we fly.

When Kate Amatruda, MFT, CST-T, BCETS, EMT, DMAT, DSHR-DMH is not responding to disasters, seeing clients, or doing math homework with her son, she’s scrying for an agent for her novel, a salsa version of Pride and Prejudice with a gender twist.

Colette Obrien has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis on Jungian Psychology. She has had a meditation and yoga practice for over 30 years and for the last 25 years a private practice as a counselor and teacher, counseling individuals and couples. Her travel stories and photographs have been published in newspapers and magazines across the U.S. and Canada. Her first novel, Time & Transformation, was in inspired by her studies and time spent with the Maya in the Yucatan.

Monday, April 14, 2008 5:30pm ||
Book Passage-Ferry Plaza || One Ferry Plaza #46, San Francisco
For Info: See Book Passage or mailto: leftcoastwriters@aol.com

Our Poetry Reading Series are one of our most popular events. Come listen to award-winning poet, Becky Foust, as she reads pieces from her new book of poetry, “Dark Card” (due out in May, 2008 by Texas Review Press) on raising a son with Asperger’s Syndrome, along with Gail Flynn and Elaine Bond.

Becky Foust is an award-winning, published poet whose work will be featured in Poetry Magazine this fall. The Clackamas Literary Review has just accepted seven of Becky’s poems, and others are out in current issues of Margie, Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Caesura, Dos Passos Review, JAMA, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, North American Review, Taproot Literary Review, Wordgathering.com and others. Click here to visit her website at www.rebeccafoust.com to learn more about Becky’s work and upcoming events.
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Elaine Bond is an award-winning artist and scientist who won an award for her University of California program where she took 3,000 teens who were at-risk for dropping out of high school and showed them how to use the scientific method outdoors. Many of these kids have pursued higher education. Elaine also writes songs, sings and plays a mean guitar as Dusty Miller.

This reading series by our LEFT COAST WRITERS® always provides us with such a treat, whether it is our poets sharing their truth-filled pieces, writers making us laugh or cry or pause with deep reflection as they read their short stories, memoirs or erotica-filled prose. Come listen to our April readers and then join us for networking at a nearby watering hole.

While you’re there, check out what’s new at Book Passage, buy a book, or sign up a friend for our Salons.

Roadwork is the LeftCoastWriters.com on-line column about travel, writing and the writer’s life. All members of Left Coast Writers are welcome to submit an essay of 800 to 1000 words to editor Pat Bracewell at Roadwork@Leftcoastwriters.com for on-line publication. A new Roadwork column is posted on our website every other month.

By the way, Christine takes excellent portraits for your author photos and does wedding photography.

The reason I attended the Maui Writers Conference that year was not because I’d dutifully saved my money, planned ahead, and was finally ready to put myself out there after years of hiding behind my fear of being rejected in a noble effort to publish my yet-to-be-written memoir. No, the real reason I decided to attend the conference that year was simply because I was chasing yet another good-looking-commitment-phobic-he’s-just-not-that-into-me man/boy with mother issues with whom I’d had a brief affair while on vacation in Maui, and I wanted to appear to have a legitimate reason to return to the scene of the crime.

I’d known about the Maui Writers Conference for years, but always had a good reason not to go. Like I wasn’t ready to show my work to anyone, or I felt too fat to wear a bikini, or God forbid I might actually have to write something if I attended a writers conference, or nobody likes me everybody hates me I think I’m going to eat a worm, and so on. But upon returning home from my vacation fling, before I’d even unpacked my suntan lotion, I sat down at my computer and registered for the upcoming conference. (Apparently lust trumped fear.)

Clearly I was a glutton for punishment, but after all, the title of my memoir was Falling into Manholes, so this rerun could be considered fieldwork, right? Perhaps my travels to distant shores to date unavailable men would be tax deductible, I reasoned (or rational-lie-zed), and made a note to ask my accountant.

Okay, so my motives for attending the conference were a little skewed, but it’s not like I was completely unprepared. In the previous eighteen months I’d published two personal essays in small press anthologies, crafted a pretty good book proposal, and scored a literary agent. So, when Labor Day weekend rolled around, I packed a bikini and my worst intentions, and off I went.

Upon my arrival, instead of focusing on the conference, I was preoccupied with checking for messages from Cliff. We’d planned to meet several days later, but I couldn’t imagine why he didn’t want to rush to my side! To pass the time until our rendezvous, (or more specifically to keep myself occupied while waiting to be dumped), I wandered around the conference until I stumbled across a giant banner that said, “Jay Leno’s Pitch to America.” A line of would-be-authors were waiting to pitch their story ideas to the cameras in the hopes that they would be one of the few selected to be aired on the Jay Leno show. I’d never pitched my story out loud, and the prospect of doing so for the first time in front of a giant camera was horrifying, but I was looking for distractions, and this fit the bill. Terrifying and potentially humiliating, it sounded like the perfect dating substitute.

When it was my turn, I stood trembling at the microphone and blurted out, “Falling into Manholes is a funny, insightful book about how I learned to take the “me” out of men.” OMG, I thought, did I say that out loud? I was feeling as though the only way this whole experience could be worse was if I were naked, when the male producer asked, “Can you give us an example?”

I froze. I hadn’t written the book yet and wasn’t prepared with a glib answer. Before I could stop myself I enquired, “Can I say blowjob on national television?”

Naturally, the producer said, “Sure!” so I proceeded to tell a story about “Brad,” that involved “presidential sex” and Christmas shopping, before slinking away, determined to go into denial about what I’d just done. They won’t pick me anyway, I thought, proceeding to my next humiliation stop: pitching my story to the Editor in Chief of Putnam, Neil Nyren.

Sitting across a little table from Neil, I was nervous. He looked serious, deadpan and bookish - not at all the type of person that I’d envisioned might be interested in my memoir, but I plunged ahead. Anything was better then obsessing about Cliff.

“I don’t think this is really your kind of book,” I began, “but you’re the biggest publisher here, and you’ve been around forever and know everyone, so I’d very much appreciate your feedback on my little project.”

At this point I lowered my face into my hands, as though to collect myself, and as I jerked my head back up, like an actress hurling herself into character, I launched into my schpeel.

“Falling into Manholes is a collection of coming-of-middle-age stories about looking for love in all the wrong places - food, alcohol, drugs, men - and finding it, in yourself.” (The finding it in myself part was not quite true yet, but I was optimistic that my book would eventually have a happy ending - and not the massage parlor kind). I talked for a couple more minutes, during which time Neil maintained his poker face, but after I finished, he told me he liked my idea, and asked me to send him the essays I’d had published! As I took his card and rushed back to my room to email him the essays, I started getting excited about something I couldn’t have articulated at the time. Something that felt like hope.

Two days after Neil returned to New York, he emailed that he loved my essays, and requested my book proposal. Several days later he told me that one of his women editors read my proposal and came into his office demanding that he “Buy this book right now so Wendy will move to Manhattan and be my new best friend!” That comment alone would have won my heart, but in the end Putnam paid me to write my story. Cliff may not have wanted me, but Neil did, and so did Jay Leno (I was “bleep job” girl on Pitch to America). And so it was that chasing Mr. Wrong led me to Mr. Write.

And as for the book, well, my relationship with my book had only just begun. Now all I needed to do was write my way towards that happy ending.

Wendy Merrill’s memoir, Falling into Manholes: The Memoir of a Bad/Good Girl, will be released March 27, 2008. Check out www.fallingintomanholes.com for details and events.

Book Passage || 51 Tamal Vista Dr., Corte Madera
For Info: See Book Passage or 415-927-0960

Meet Wendy Merrill, a quirky, attractive, in-recovery-from…well, you can pretty much name it…who, while seemingly on the quest for her perfect mate, keeps falling into manholes. After losing herself in an endless series of attachments, this serial mater comes to see how her relationships with men are indicative of all her relationships - with alcohol, food, drugs, family, friends, and most of all, herself.

Smart, funny and embarrassingly honest, the tales in Falling Into Manholes recount the common experience of looking for love in all the wrong places, and the not-so-common experience of finding it in yourself - and it feels like talking with your best friend. Wendy represents the bad girl/good girl paradox deep within every woman, and writes what women often think, but don’t have the nerve to say. Her favorite books growing up were Little House on the Prairie and The Happy Hooker, and even then she fantasized about a scenario in which Xaviera Hollander lived happily ever after with Laura, Ma and Pa. Wendy was the tall, scrawny late bloomer on the sidelines of the seventh-grade dance who turned into the sweet-sixteen-never-been-kissed good girl yearning to be bad. PhD’s were the norm in her family, yet she aspired to be comfortable on any barstool in the world. In college, she took a class called “Dating and Marriage” - and got an F. “I always aspired to an A+,” she says. “I just didn’t think it would end up being my bra size.”

With honesty, humor and style, Falling Into Manholes explores the contradictions and imperfections of being a woman, in a book about relationships, addiction, self-esteem (and the lack thereof), and going to any lengths to discover what matters. This menmoir gives the reader what we all need more of: a good laugh, an easy read, and hope.

Wendy owns and runs an advertising agency called WAM Marketing Group and lives above ground and beyond her means in Sausalito.

Karen Templer, Editor in Chief and Doug Cruickshank, Features Editor of Readerville online

Editor in Chief, Karen Templer, and Features Editor, Douglas Cruickshank will talk about Readerville, the content and the community.

In the nearly 8 years since Readerville first appeared online, it has taken many forms. It was first a place where readers and writers and publishing insiders could meet each day to find out what’s interesting in the world of books. In 2001 a full-fledged online bookstore was added and Readerville began publishing content. In 2002 the bookstore went away and a print magazine was launched, called The Readerville Journal. The Readerville Journal ceased publication in 2003, but the website survived and continues to be the wacky and thought-provoking community it started out as.